The Quiet of A Rented House
by Vaysh11
Summary: Every day, Draco takes a walk in Ham Hill Park. Harry/Draco slash


**The Quiet of a Rented House**

Autumn sweeps into the cottage with a golden flutter of leaves. They bring in a brisk cold that makes Draco light the fireplace for the first time. The ash he clears out of the pit belonged to the witch who lived here before him. He kneels on her cushion, laid out on the floor for fire-calls he never makes. He bought the cottage with the last Galleons left in the Malfoy vault. It's his place but with the shadows lengthening, it feels like a rented house. It feels like he will die here. Which is ridiculous. He turned thirty-two this summer. He has a long life before him.

Small flames lick at the wood he brought in from the shed. They catch on the logs and erupt into a sudden blaze. There's warmth, non-magical and real like he hasn't felt in the eight months since he moved to Little Norton. He holds out his palms and can almost hear the crackling of the flames. It brings happy memories – of winter nights at the Manor, of fire-calls home from Hogwarts. Of Blaise's body, a dark expanse of skin reflecting fiery-bright sparks. When he will return from his walk later, the cottage will be brimming with comforting heat, at least.

Since the end of summer, Draco has started to take walks in Ham Hill Park. The place is drenched in old magic, reaching out from the mound that rises up at its centre. Unrestrained by the Muggle memorial atop, the air vibrates with the sheer power of the magic at its core. Usually, he walks the lane to Witcombe, the wizarding village nestled at the foot of the hill. He could take other paths, leading deeper into the park or to the Muggle town not far away. But recluse that he's become he still gravitates towards his own kind. He'd never do well in the Muggle world. Even Potter said so.

He changes, puts the elegant grey robes on, the ones with the brocaded trim. They go well with the night that falls so early now, and he still owns dozens of expensive robes, ever threatening to spill from his wardrobe.

While he goes through the familiar moves of warding the cottage, a strip of dark is spreading on the horizon. He will return in the pitch-black of night but Draco doesn't mind. He seeks the twilight these days, when he's the only one in the park, and nobody wonders about the lone wizard who moved into the Sharpenhoes' cottage behind their house at Cockscomb Alley.

He is walking with brisk steps until streetlamps appear at the side of the road, a sure sign that Muggles live here. Like in most of Britain, Little Norton is mostly a Muggle village, with a few wizarding houses and streets that its non-magical population knows nothing of. The Sharpenhoes' townhouse looks like a run-down brothel to Muggle eyes, Draco has been told. He wouldn't know, for he's only ever seen the grand and well-kept Palladian-style building.

Still, he's become interested in Muggles these last years. Partly, it had been his job, when he was still working at the Ministry. Everybody in the Department of Mysteries is encouraged to study what Muggles call superstitions – often they will hold ancient knowledge that is forgotten in the modern wizarding world.

The other part is Potter, of course. He would do the strangest things, like set his half-broken Muggle alarm clock when he could have cast a simple wake-up spell. But whenever Draco called him on it, he would smile and utter some inanity, like he was _used to it_ and _old habits die hard_. It left Draco to study secretly the Muggle things Potter was using: alarm clocks, ball pens, colourful stamps for Muggle letters. He had even been to Little Whinging once, where the infamous Privet Drive no. 4 has become a tourist attraction since the end of the war.

As Draco walks down the Muggle street leadings towards Ham Hill Park, he is reminded of those clipped lawns and hopeless flowerbeds. Even now, when he's lost so much, he cannot fathom what it must have been like for Potter to grow up in a place as deplete of magic as those arrow-straight streets and box-shaped houses.

The streetlamps are still dark but several windows are lit with the pale light of an electric lamp. Whenever he passes, Draco throws surreptitious glances into the windows, trying to see what is going on inside. Tonight, a Muggle is moving around, a man perhaps in his forties. He's setting a table for five. His hair is full, a washed-out blond, and too long, touching the collar of his sweater. Watching through the chequered curtains, Draco finds himself imaging the clatter of silverware on porcelain, the gushing of wine poured into cut-crystal, long-stemmed glasses. The quiet murmur of talk. The happiness that only the sound of laughter can bring. His father's voice, dark, cultured, full of energy, speaking to his mother, who always seems to either tease or placate him. Draco catches fragments of words – _night_, _...stry Ball_ – and he cherishes each like a gift, more precious than the jewellery he's inherited from his parents. When Dobby's shrill voice is calling for dinner, he smiles at himself. He's learned not to take anything for certain anymore, but there's certainly no house-elves preparing dinner in those quaint Muggle homes. A memory flashes through his mind, of white curtains trailing the marble floor of the Manor's dining room, silk rustling stiffly in the breeze ...

He visited the Manor this summer, shortly before taking up the walks. The magicked wrought iron of the gate still recognised his blood and opened at his hesitant touch. Draco didn't hear its rusty click or the welcoming words of the iron mouth, but the gates still swung wide open for him.

Which had been a bit of a surprise, as ownership of the Manor has been passed on to the Bones family. Susan hadn't wanted him to go through with it. Touching her girlish plait in a gesture that betrayed both gratitude and the unwillingness to accept anything from a former Death Eater, she'd said, _Let me rent the Manor from you, let me and the kids stay for free, if you want. You don't have to sign it over, Draco._ Much as the Boneses had always been mixed up with half-bloods and Muggles, she had a grasp of what giving up his family's estate meant in the pure-blood world. But Draco's lawyers firmly stuck to his written instructions. In confidence and no unclear words, Briggs had told him what a stupendous mistake it was, unworthy of a Malfoy and he would do better to honour his father's memory.

But Briggs doesn't know half of it. Neither does Susan nor who else is left alive of her family. And of course, once the news of the signing over hit the press, Draco received another furious owl from Potter, ending with _When the fuck can I see you again?_, scribbled in blotchy black ink. Since, not a day has passed that Draco hasn't re-read the owl. But Potter doesn't know, either.

And so it wasn't Potter who'd whittled Draco's defences down that day in the summer, but a forgotten memory, sweet like the taste of Mother's roses on his tongue. One moment Draco was walking through a copse of elms, enjoying the summer day, the next moment longing shot through him, so sharp he bowled over. He Apparated wandlessly and almost involuntarily, spinning on the path mottled with the elm leaves' flickering shadows. To this day he doesn't know what brought on this overwhelming need for the sight, the smell, the familiar sounds of home.

Standing at the open gate at the foot of the drive leading up to the Manor, it had all been different, as he should have known. Susan was cutting back the hedges, house-elf work and who ever heard of cutting hedges in the height of summer? She wore a straw hat and frayed blue robes his mother wouldn't have been caught dead in. But Narcissa Malfoy's funeral robes had to be brittle and mouldy by now, having lain in the family crypt for years. Draco stood by the gate, waiting for ... a sound, any sound. There was nothing but silence. He'd left before Susan saw him.

For the longest time, Draco regretted that his parents hadn't been alive to see him enter the Department of Mysteries. He'd rebuilt the family name and became the Ministry's foremost expert in magical forensics, working with Head Auror Potter on a regular basis. But seeing the Manor again, he was almost glad they were dead, killed in a freak Portkey accidence that is still – after seven years – under investigation. Their deaths changed Draco's life even more fundamentally than the war. It sparked his interest in magical forensics. It made leaving the Manor easier, too many memories painted on its walls. It brought him closer to Potter, too.

Potter had shown up at the funeral, uninvited and clearly he hadn't planned on coming. Draco attended other funerals with Harry Potter present; he _knows_ the git can dress just fine for the occasion in official Auror robes. It's taken a while, but by now Draco can admit to himself that what started that day was more than infatuation with the Golden Boy. If someone were to search his mind by Legilimency, they'd find many memories of Potter. Yet always close to the surface is this: a boy with wild black hair, in ripped trainers and a Muggle t-shirt too baggy for his thin frame, in his hand a rose, brilliantly white and untouched by magic. At its centre, a dewdrop sparkles when he lays it on the edging of the open coffin. It's a memory Draco holds dear in his mind. Each year on the anniversary of his parents' death white roses appear at the crypt, telling him that Potter remembers, too.

But that is the past. This year, Draco hasn't been to the crypt. He doesn't know whether Potter sent roses for the anniversary. The Manor is no longer _Malfoy_ Manor, no matter that the Bones family refused to rename the estate. Susan told him to come visit whenever he wanted, but she doesn't know. He cannot go back. His old life is over and maybe this is what the lengthening shadows mean to tell him.

The streetlamps are springing to light, one after the other, when Draco enters the park. The air is rich with the scent of overripe apples and wet earth. Nature is preparing for a long winter. He can feel it in the crunch of the leaves underneath his boots, he can smell the hint of snow in the wind. Dusk falls like a dark blue wing, sweeping the meadows around Ham Hill. There is a quiet to the park that is alive and soothing. It calls Draco out of his cottage even on the worst of days.

There are nightmares – of the brittle silence of the Room of Hidden, of useless and broken Things. Of tortured screams, rising up from the Manor's cellars. And closer to Draco's room, from the hall where the Dark Lord resided, the snake's acidic stench all around him. Whenever he was at home during those last two years of the war, Draco had cast a _Muffliato_ on himself, to be able to fall asleep at night. Granger tells him that the prolonged use of any spell is dangerous, and that a _Muffliato_ is not meant as a protection from unwelcome noise. But there are days even now when Draco misses the soft buzzing that filled his ears and let him sleep when downstairs the Dark Lord was hissing his deadly commands.

A memory enters the quiet of the park from nowhere and unbidden:

_"The wards were dismantled at the back gate of the garden. We need you to find out how he did it."_

_"Have the house-elves been questioned?"_

_"The Boneses don't ... elves ... Malfoy."_

_"Beg you pardon?"_

_"They don't own house-elves. And I know you're perfectly aware of it. It's only you and those wards. Tell me how the intruder got around them."_

_"Intruders, Potter. It must have been more than one. Not even a very powerful wizard can take out these wards alone within such a short span of time."_

_"Good. I'll ask Susan about ... dangerous ... come back to me?"_

_"Stop mumbling, Potter. I'll let you know when I've found out more."_

Walking through the darkening park, it strikes Draco how there had been signs all along. He should have removed himself from his job long before the murders. It strikes him, too, how relaxed Potter sounded, talking to him, trusting him, despite their past. Draco wishes, belatedly but with all his heart, that Potter hadn't put his trust in the wrong man.

His world has become so quiet this last year. There are times when Draco feels like there's a _Muffliato_ around him all the time now, and he has become so used to the buzzing that he doesn't hear it anymore. Granger tells him it's a rather apt description of what happened to him. She is the only one who talks to him when he goes into London for his weekly appointment at St Mungo's. One could say that they have become friends, of sorts. And that's just Fate, playing another one of her tricks on him, that he can be friends with Granger, but not let Potter close. Week after week, she tries to coax words out of him, but he hates it. He can tell Granger despairs of him, but in her brown eyes there is never the lukewarm pity that he sees in others. For that, Draco is grateful. For that, he is willing to say a few words and pretend he cares. And Granger has been true to her promise and not told Potter. Which is why he returns every week and goes through the exercises with her, no matter that it kills him inside.

He hasn't seen the Head Auror since the day of the murders. Here in the park Draco can admit to himself that he misses Potter, half-arsed grin, stupid spectacles, the way he would touch his arm or shoulder, hands strong and warm. It always took Draco's breath away and even thinking about it now, his heart stutters. Sometimes he lets his mind wander and he imagines Potter following him around on his walks. Hiding behind trees or underneath his bloody Cloak, but always following Draco like back in sixth year. He finds himself watching for suspicious shadows, for quick movements in the corner of his eye. And sometimes he is certain he's seen _something_ – the bright flash of a trainer not pulled back fast enough, a shaking branch when there is no wind and everything else is unmoving.

A flock of ducks rises from the ferns at the side of the small pond that is slowly filling with silt. During Salazar Slytherin's times, honey-golden hamstone was quarried here for the building of the Priory in Stoke sub Hamdon. It is long gone now, but Father often told him about the wizard priors who ran their lands with both magic and the help of God. Draco's cottage is built of hamstone, too, just as all the older houses in Little Norton. He touches the boulder on the side of the path. Eggshell-coloured residue sticks to his fingers, and he's tempted to lick it off his skin. There is no one around but his phantom Potter, hiding perhaps behind the shrubbery that blazes in autumnal reds and yellows and browns. But Mother wouldn't approve, and Draco still is his mother's son. Quickly he wipes his hands on his trousers, hidden underneath the robes. Then, just when he turns from the stones to continue on his way, the setting sun catches _something_ and a bright ray shoots up into the leaves overhanging the path. It's there, it's gone, and Draco whirls around –

Nothing but his mind playing tricks on him. The faint quivers in the ferns are probably ducks. The shudder running through the copsewood must be the wind. He cannot feel it, but there's always a breeze in the park.

He casts a last glance at the lake, then turns and walks and walks until the first houses of Witcombe rise before him. Soft light is flooding from the windows of The Square and Compass, and the smell of warm food fills the cobble-stoned street.

Draco never goes into the pub. Usually he turns at the sight of the village and walks back to Little Norton. But today he is tempted to treat himself to the old-fashioned wizarding food offered at the Square, a dish of cider-baked mackerels or the braised pigeons with mushrooms. He feels for his purse in the pocket of his robes, and finds it, along with the role of parchment and his travel quill. He will have to order by pointing to the menu or worse, write his wishes down. The thought brings Draco to a halt. A shadow moves behind the lighted window of the pub, but the glass pane is too old and warped to see clearly what is going on inside.

He turns before he's even fully made up his mind. A group of wizards and witches approach from the road, and some greet him with polite nods when they enter the pub. He steps aside and returns to where the village ends and the park begins. It's dark now with the moon a fat silver sliver low in the sky. It throws enough of its watery light for Draco to see the path, and he retraces his steps, thinking ahead of the mushroom pie waiting in the kitchen for him, and the fire crackling in the living room.

He cannot tell why he knows someone is following him. There are no fleeting shadows, no unexplained movements behind trees and shrubbery. But Draco knows. _Potter_, is his first thought, as if the Head Auror had nothing else to do but hike the Somerset countryside at night. He turns around to look down the moonlit path stretching behind him, but only the lights of Witcombe are blinking in the distance.

Smiling at his own ludicrous imaginings, he draws his wand. Draco never cared much for nonverbal magic. He'd loved casting spells aloud, vowels rolling of his tongue like drops of water from one leaf to the other until they found their target, hit the ground, exploded into sound and magic. Necessity has forced him to take up the art, using his mind alone to bid his magic to his wishes. He's mastered most of the common spells, and even some of the more complicated ones. Snape would be rather proud of him.

He does not cast a _Lumos_. The grey in grey of the moonlit night is his friend, whereas a bright light would blind him to all but his immediate surroundings. Then he sees it – a dark shape moving from behind the boulder at the grown-in pond. And another one, detaching itself from the trees. They are wearing robes. Wizards then, standing not ten yards in front of him, blocking the narrow path. What are they thinking, attacking another wizard strolling the park by night? It must be the robes he's wearing. They make him look like the rich man he no longer is. The greatest advantage of nonverbal magic is speed, and Draco counts on it to get him safely out of this stupid ambush.

Red splits the greyness of the twilight, and pain, sharp and hot, hits Draco's back. He is on his knees before he realises there are more attackers than the two in front of him. He manages to cast a Shielding Charm but he can't keep it up, not with the pain that spreads from his neck and makes him nauseous within seconds. More red flashes, and a soundless scream is forcibly ripped from his throat. He is on the ground, trying to protect his head with his arms. His wand is ripped from his fist, swift hands search his robes. They roll him over and shout at him, but he cannot hear a word they're saying. Their faces are white, their eyes dark, and their mouths twist and move, but all Draco hears is the buzzing in his ears. Then one of them kicks him in the head. Path, boulder and park vanish from Draco's sight and darkness takes him to –

_Two bodies are lying to the side, covered with red robes barely reaching to their knees. Susan's husband and her brother-in-law. Muggle-born, they have been with the Aurors for years._ Some of my best, _Potter said, and the Head Auror doesn't give praise lightly. There are more dead bodies, to the other side. Behind Draco, where the Bones family's house used to stand, a seething wall of fire rises high into the sky. Its flame-tinged shadows cover everything. _

_He is standing in the middle of the garden, wearing his Unspeakable robes, the black fabric shimmering purple against the flames. His wand is at his feet; he remembers vaguely having dropped it._

_Potter has him by the shoulders, shaking him hard. There's a gash across his cheek that opens and bleeds as Potter's mouth moves frantically._ Are you all right? _Draco can make out from the way the lips move, and_, What the fuck happened?

_It's his fault, all of it. He felt the Tracking Spell sizzle when he took down the wards protecting the Boneses' garden, but didn't think much of it. His mind was on the way wards are spellbound to their owners' magic, and the powers it takes to get around that bond._

_He didn't hear the crack of Apparition, didn't hear the death screams of his colleagues when the intruders killed them with the brute force of a knife. He never heard Potter, yelling at him to watch out for the man to his left. He didn't heard the first _Avada Kedavra _nor the second come from the man's lips, killing Wilfred and Edwin Kempert, both._

_He could have saved them, with his wand raised and at the ready and the only one close enough for a Stunner. Potter knows. Draco sees it in his questioning eyes. His lips ask without sound, over and over again,_ What happened, Draco, what?

_Potter pulls him close for Apparition to St Mungo's, obviously assuming he's been hurt in the attack. When they leave the burning carcass of the house behind, Draco hears the cry of a nightjar, harbinger of the dark season since the times of Salazar Slytherin in the fen. It's the last sound he recalls hearing. Since then, there's been only silence._

The two bodies leaning against the boulder are bound and gagged by an _Incarcerous_ cast with vicious force. Draco stares at them when he comes around, trying to find his bearings. He's still lying on the path with the stars twinkling above in the night-sky. His wand is up his sleeve, his head is bedded on a folded set of robes that smell like beeswax and –

Someone is moving around in the shadows, a familiar shape in Muggle clothes. Draco closes his eyes, he moves his hands across his face. Potter? When he looks again, the man is crouching beside him, a _Lumos_ at the tip of his wand lighting his face. Green eyes, the famous, familiar scar, dark stubble on his boyish chin. He is talking, a lot and fast.

Draco tries to read his lips, but it's too dark to make out any words. He reaches up without thought and puts his fingers on Potter's mouth. Potter flinches, but stops with the talking. Draco sits up a bit too fast. Black dots are dancing again in front of him. He sways but Potter's arm is around his waist at once, helping him up. He starts talking again, and Draco shakes his head. Salazar, just how much clearer does he need to spell it out for him?

"Can't hear you," Draco says, and he hopes the words resemble anything like human speech. Granger told him to feel for the vibrations of his voice, but he can't bring himself to touch his throat now. Potter's eyes are on him, his hand still resting on his hip. Draco wants nothing more than to slump against him, but he doesn't give in. Instead he steps back and pulls the writing utensils from his robes.

He scribbles the truth on the parchment and hands it to Potter. _I am deaf_, it says and he meets Potter's gaze that goes from blank to astonished to shrewd. Potter holds out his hand, and it takes long seconds before Draco understands he is asking for the quill.

Potter scribbles fast. _Is it permanent? You fucking idiot! Why didn't you tell me? Is this damage from the Bones murders?_

He tosses the quill and parchment back to Draco, barely suppressed anger visible in every move. The last words are a furious smear that is almost impossible to make out. Draco takes a deep breath. _Yes_, he writes, _Watch your tongue, Potter. I had my reasons. No._

Potter is standing beside him, holding his lit wand over the parchment and watching him write. He points at the last word and asks, "How?" annunciating slowly for Draco to see.

Draco adds, _Damage from the war,_ and that is that. Four words that mean he was unfit for his job and knew it. Four words that mean Susan's husband would still be alive if not for him. Potter's intelligent enough to figure it out. It's one of the things Draco learned about him after the war.

He can smell the faint woody scent that always lingers around Potter, as if the man was spending all his free time in a brooms' shop. He turns instinctively, dropping quill and parchment, but he doesn't care. The light of the _Lumos_ is blindingly close when Potter wraps his arms around him. Face buried in his neck, Draco feels the vibration underneath his warm skin, an upswing to the last word. He looks up, and Potter repeats his question slowly, making sure Draco can see his lips move. "Do you need to go to St Mungo's?"

Draco shakes his head and mouths his answer, and he realises he means the cottage, not the Manor. His face is so close to Potter, he's almost touching his lips. It is Potter who closes this last distance, but when they kiss, wildly vibrating sounds escape from Draco's throat. Hands in Potter's hair, his body pressed against him as close as he can, he imagines the warmth of his fire-place and the yellow leaves on the floor in front of it. Then he casts the Apparition spell, which has always been nonverbal, guided by the smell of beeswax and turpentine and the bitter-sweet taste of home on his tongue.

_fin_


End file.
